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An open letter to the NKCF
A letter that I sent to the National Keratoconus Foundation about something that’s been on my mind lately. My name is Keidra Chaney, I am a Keratoconus patient and proud donor to the National Keratoconus Foundation. I’d like to thank NKCF for your continuing work in raising greater awareness and understanding of Keratoconus for doctors, […]
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A garden walk between love and hate
Originally performed at Tuesday Funk, September 1, 2020 This is a story about the power of love and nurturing during hard times. It’s also a story about hate, and how sometimes hate is transformative, sometimes liberating. I know that in these divisive times. talking about embracing hate doesn’t feel constructive, but please bear with me, […]
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A Love Letter to Hair Love
Originally performed at the 1st Annual Naw-scars show in Chicago on Feb 7, 2020 I first heard about Hair Love, the Oscar-Nominated animated short, in 2017, when it was a Kickstarter campaign from director Matthew Cherry. I saw the pitch for it on Twitter, thought the idea was cute, threw some money at it, and kept […]
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Writing to Get My Life
It’s the first week of 2020, so of course I am feeling at once overwhelmed and refreshed. Thinking about possibilities while also trying to catch up (at least with work). It’s been a good opportunity for me to think about what I want to do and what I don’t want to do, this year, and […]
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I don’t always know how to answer when people ask ”how are your eyes?”
[originally posted on (S)lightly Disabled] Having an invisible disability or chronic illness often means a lot of things get left unsaid when you interact with others – friends, acquaintences, co-workers, even people you love. Sometimes it’s about not wanting to “kill the vibe” or be a burden. Sometimes it’s about internalized guilt or even internalized […]
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What I’m up to
I’m going back to school to study accessibility. I just thought i would bring it up when I talk about “classes” or whatever. I decided that I wanted to get educated in web accessibility/accessible design last year when I had yet another meltdown about how hard it can be to do my computer-based job with […]
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Flying Blind: Epilogue … and a beginning
So I’m back from my travels, still recovering from switching time zones and settling back into Chicago life. I’ve been really emotional for the past couple of days, partially being emo about the end of three weeks of fun, but also out of gratitude for everything I’ve experienced. Here it all is in a Tweetstorm I […]
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Flying Blind: Traveling Internationally with Keratoconus
So, I’m back from Tokyo and it was an AWESOME trip. If you want to see pics, they’re on my Instagram, but I wanted to talk a bit about my experience traveling with Keratoconus. I was really nervous about doing this kind of travel for many years because I’ve had a couple of scary experiences […]
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Flying Blind: Best Laid Plans
So I was supposed to get my glasses today so I can take my long trip with minimal risk of eye infection drama. (Reminder: without my special contacts my vision is very badly impaired, so eye infections limit my mobility.) Well, the person at LensCrafters messed up the prescription on my left lens so my […]
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Flying Blind: The Adventure (Almost) Begins
It’s a week and a half before I go to Tokyo. It’s the first international trip I’ve taken since my Keratoconus got worse and started to disrupt my daily life, so I’ve been a bit nervous about the trip. OK, I’m understating things. I’ve been lowkey panicking about the trip even before I booked it, […]